Sorry , but I'm calling BS on the idea that higher level languages are needed to abstract the hardware so that they can economically solve complex problems. In my experience its usually the exact opposite. High level languages lock you into a specific solution for a broad class of problems. C/C++ and assembly let you tailor a solution to the specific problem, allowing it to be solved much more efficiently, if at all. No way in hell a high level language is going to run real time object tracking and classification at 30 fps on a 10 megapixel feed.
Stop assuming modern computers are overpowered for everyones tasks. Some of us need computers to be hundreds or thousands of times faster than they are before we can deploy applications we already have sitting in the back room until then.